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Boudinettes of Meat

A French meat dumpling made with cold meat, potatoes, mushrooms, and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boudinettes of Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Finely mince the cold meat, removing any fat and gristle.

  2. Boil the potatoes, then dry them thoroughly and pass them through a sieve.

  3. Chop the mushrooms and mix them with the minced meat, seasoning well.

  4. Melt the butter in a stewpan, then add the potatoes and mix well.

  5. Combine the potato mixture with the meat and mushrooms, then let it cool on a plate.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape the mixture into cork-shaped pieces.

  2. Dip each piece in egg and coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper.

Serve

  1. Serve on a folded doily in a circle, garnished with fried parsley in the center.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the savoury body of the croquette filling.
Potatoes
Bind the filling and give it a soft, smooth texture when pushed through a sieve.
Egg
Acts as the glue that helps the bread crumbs stick to each piece.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the potato mixture.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Drying the potatoes thoroughly. Excess water in the boiled potatoes makes the mixture loose and wet, so the shaped pieces can collapse or burst in hot fat. Drying before sieving keeps the filling firm enough to hold its cork shape.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, mushroom, pepper, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, mushroom, pepper, egg, bread, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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